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.He'd disconnected the gauge lights on the altered tracker to delay as longas possible the moment when the Klaggs realized they'd been duped, and it drifted forlornly behind him,like a rather dirty balloon attached by an invisible line to the trackball in his pocket.Right turn, then second left, Luke repeated to himself.A wall panel in one of the recycling chambers, anarrow shaft at a forty-five-degree angle.He settled his mind, collecting about himself, in spite of thepain and the slow numbing of the overdoses of perigen, the mental focus, the inner quiet, that was thestrength of the Force.For the dozenth--or hundredth--time since that particular side effect had begun tomake itself felt, he wondered if he'd be able to work better with an infection-induced fever and theconstant stress of pain.It had to work, he thought.It had to.He turned a corner, and stopped.A dead Jawa lay in the corridor.It had a handful of cables wound around one shoulder, a satchel open beside its hand.Luke limped tothe body, eased himself down to kneel beside it, and touched the skinny black claw of wrist.A charredpit of blaster fire gaped in its side.Batteries and power cells lay strewn around the open satchel.Luke scooped them back into the leatherpouch, slung the strap over his shoulder.Faint whirring made him look up, to face two small droids of akind he'd never seen before.Gyroscopically balanced on single wheels, they reminded him of some of theolder models of interrogation droids, but instead of pincer arms they had long, silvery tentacles, jointedlike snakes.Small round sensors, like cold eyes, triangulated on him at the end of prehensile stalks.The two droids were barely taller than Artoo-Detoo but there was a curiously insectile menace to themthat made Luke back slowly away.The tentacles extruded with a whippy hiss, encircled and lifted the Jawa's tattered little carcass.Thedroids swiveled and shot away.Luke followed to the door of a cavern lit only by the sickish glow ofgauge lights and readouts.The smell of the place was like walking into a wall of muck: ammoniac,organic, and vile.Steam frothed thinly from beneath the covers of the three round, well-like vats whosemetal curbs rose scarcely half a meter above the bare durasteel of the deck.As the snake-eyed droidsapproached the nearest tank its cover dilated open.The stench redoubled as steam poured forth,knee-high ground fog that swirled to the farthest corners of the room.The droids raised the Jawa corpse high and dropped it into the vat with a viscous ploop.The coverdilated shut.A sharp rattle at Luke's side made him jump.A slotted hatchway popped open in the wall, and atumble of belt buckles, boot latches, a stormtrooper helmet, and some half-dissolved bones clattered intothe catchbin under the hatch, everything dripping brownish enzymatic acid.The skull of a Gamorrean grinned up at Luke from the bin.Luke stepped quickly back.Though he knew that full recycling from enzymatic breakdown productsdidn't kick in until the second or third week of deepspace missions, still he found himself queasy at thememory of that gukked egg.The foo-twitter waited for him in the corridor.Luke led the way through another door, past backupenzyme tanks locked up cold and closed, to the far wall.At the touch of the lights on his staff the threeSP-80'S ranked in a corner swiveled their cubical upper bodies, the wide-range sensor squares castingdim blue glare.A small MMF rolled out of the darkness and rattled its three arms at him like a baremechanical tree.It halted beside Luke as he knelt to pop the panel hatches, reached to take the hatchcover from him with the surprising, irresistible strength of droids.Luke leaned around the back and hit thepause button.The MMF froze, panel still raised in its grippers.Within the shaft, the enclision grid's lattices grinned at him like broken, icy teeth, fading out of sight intothe dark chimney above.Very carefully, Luke leaned into the shaft.It ascended two levels at a steep slant, climbable at a pinch,but not by a man with a useless leg.The square, cold patchwork of the walls seemed to whisper, Try it.Go ahead.It's like causing a blaster to misfire, Callista had said.And, The more that hit you, the more that will.He thumbed the trackball in his pocket, and the silvery tracker drifted close.He'd examined the latches that dogged panels shut from behind, so it was an easy matter to reachthrough with his mind--as he had reached behind the panel leading into the shaft--and twist the latchesaside at the top.More difficult was blowing the panel clear, for it was hard to concentrate through fatigueand pain.He felt the hatch cover give, two levels up, and dimly heard the clang of it striking the floor.Air flowed gently down the shaft against his face.Two levels.Eight meters at a slant, though the darkness was too dense for his eyes to penetrate."Okay, pal," he whispered to the foo-twitter."Do your stuff."He thumbed the trackball to edge the tracker to within centimeters of the enclision field.Focused hismind, gathered his thoughts, put aside pain, weariness, and growing anxiety.Each square of the gridcame to his mind, flawed, delayed, molecules not quite meeting, synapses not quite touching-momentaryshifts in atmospheric pressure, conductivity, reaction time.And beside that, kinetic force building up likelightning, dense and waiting, aiming like a sited cannon upward into the dark.It was like shouting a word, but there was no word.Only the silent explosion of the foo-twitter's speed,rocketing upward, ripping air as if fired from a slugthrower, and the spattering hiss of lightning.Few,spidery, too late, the blue bolts zapped and fizzled from the opal squares around the metal casing,sparking where one hit, two.Then he felt it in air, and the grid fell silent again.Luke checked the monitor on the trackball.The foo-twitter was still transmitting.Shakily, he leaned his forehead on the jamb of the panel, thanked the Force and all the Powers of theuniverse.And turned, to see what, for that first moment, he thought was another foo-twitter hanging in the darkbehind him.The next second his reflexes took over and he flung himself sideways, barely in time to avoid thescorching zap of blaster fire [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]